Privacy Policy

Effective 2026-06-12 · Operator ESBE Inc · Barklee Sanders

This policy covers improvebayarea.com and the ImproveBayArea iOS app (the app is the same service in a native shell — everything below applies to both). The short version: we collect the minimum needed to file your 311 report and let you track it, we never sell or share data for advertising, and you can delete your account yourself.

What we collect

• Report content — the photo you attach, the category, your description (typed or dictated), and the location you confirm on the map. This is the whole point of the product; a 311 report without it is useless.
• Account info (optional) — you can submit without an account. If you sign in to track reports, we store your email address and, when you sign in with Apple or Google, the name and email that provider returns. This is kept in our own Cloudflare D1 database rather than sent to an identity vendor. We link your reports' case IDs to that account.
• Contact phone number (optional, San Francisco DBI complaints only) — the building-complaint form has an optional phone number field so DBI can reach you about the complaint. If you fill it in, it is passed straight through to the city with your complaint and is not stored in our database; leave it blank and nothing is sent.
• Anonymous usage analytics — Cloudflare Web Analytics counts page views without cookies and without identifying you. It is not linked to your account.

What we deliberately don't collect

• No embedded photo metadata. Photos are re-encoded in your browser before upload — embedded EXIF (GPS coordinates, device info) is removed. The only location attached to your report is the one you explicitly confirm.
• No ad trackers, no data brokers, no sale of data. Ever.
• No readable passwords, ever. If you set a password we store only a salted scrypt hash of it — the original can't be recovered from what we hold, not even by us. You can skip passwords entirely by signing in with Apple, Google, or a one-time email link or code. Voice dictation is processed by your device's speech engine and never uploaded.

Where your report goes

When you file, the report (photo, description, confirmed location) is submitted to the destination city's official public channel — SeeClickFix for Oakland and most East Bay cities, the City of San Francisco's public forms for SF. Once it leaves ImproveBayArea, it becomes a city record: the city's privacy policy and retention rules apply, and 311 reports are generally public data.

How photos are processed

Cloudflare Workers AI inspects your photo to propose a service category. The photo is processed for that purpose and to file the report — not to train models, profile you, or anything else.

Account security

The strongest option is a passkey: your device's Face ID, Touch ID or screen lock signs you in, the private key never leaves the device, and there is no shared secret for anyone to phish or for us to lose. Add one under My reports → Passkeys. Signing in with Apple or Google also needs no password and inherits whatever two-factor protection you already have there, and a one-time email link or code can't be reused or guessed.

If you do use a password, use one unique to this site — we store only an unrecoverable scrypt hash of it — and turn on two-factor authentication under My reports → Two-factor code, which adds a 6-digit code from your authenticator app. To be precise about what that covers: the code is required when you sign in with your password. Signing in by email link, email code, Apple, Google or a passkey is not affected, because each of those already proves something a password on its own does not. You get backup codes when you turn it on; they are shown once and are the only way in if you lose the app.

Data retention & deletion

• You can delete your account at any time from My reports → Delete account. That erases your account record, every session, and the saved lists of reports, notifications and hidden items we keep against it. One residue is deliberate and disclosed rather than hidden: the individual ticket records we poll for city status still carry the notification email you opted into, until they expire a year after the report was filed. Email us and we will clear those immediately.
• Reports already filed with a city cannot be deleted by us — they are the city's records.
• To request deletion of anything else, email barkleesanders@gmail.com.

Service providers

• Cloudflare — hosting, Workers AI photo categorization, anonymous analytics
• Apple and Google — only if you choose to sign in with them; they confirm your identity to us and we receive your name and email. Accounts themselves are stored by us, not by an identity vendor.
• SeeClickFix / city public forms — report submission (the destination, not a vendor of ours)

Children

ImproveBayArea is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect their data.

Changes

This policy is version-controlled in the ImproveBayArea source tree; any change is committed publicly with an updated effective date.

Contact

barkleesanders@gmail.com · 1070 Bridgeview Way #310, San Francisco, CA 94158